


Below the Belt

by chewysugar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 90's Music, Bisexual Natasha Romanov, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bisexual Thor (Marvel), Bisexual Tony Stark, Canon Rewrite, Edging, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Interviews, M/M, Masturbation, Mental Health Issues, Mile High Club, Protective Steve Rogers, Romance, Sex Positive, Sex Toys, Size Kink, WIP, magazine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:00:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27076153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: A collection of fictional articles wherein Earth's Mightiest Heroes discuss sex, love and relationships.
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Logan, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Jane Foster/Thor, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker/Mary Jane Watson, Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	1. Prep School and Porn Rings

**Author's Note:**

> So this is going to play fast and loose with canon a bit. Let's just say that the film canon will be referenced as needed in the articles. 
> 
> I figured I'd try my hand at something unconventional. This was going to be pure Hustler-style smut until I sat down to work on it. Then it took on a life of it's own, so it isn't all just porn. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sim has a casual, candid interview—over drinks—with Iron Man himself. They discuss what it's like to settle down, nostalgia, and the time Tony and his private school chums ran an underground porno distribution ring.

“Don’t be nervous; it’s not my first time.”

It’s such a Tony Stark thing to say. The glinting, Clark Gable smile and mirth crinkling the corners of his eyes could charm the pants off of me if it weren’t for the fact that he’s involved in a committed relationship. I happen to respect one Pepper Potts too much ruin the first in a new series by being disappointed.

Not that Tony wouldn’t be willing to take a chance on me, I’m sure. It’s only been two years since he left the world flabbergasted when his dating profile was leaked, and his self-identifying as bisexual caused mingled swooning and pearl-clutching.

We’re sitting in his penthouse in the heart of New York City. The veneer panels and smooth jazz set the mood—as if we’re not really having an interview about Tony Stark’s sex life, but play-acting a scene from “ _The Apartment_.” He, in the role of the suave, Fred MacMurray business man—complete with a tumbler of Balvenie and I—well, I don’t know who I am. But I’m certainly not Shirley MacLaine.

“I lost my virginity when I was sixteen,” Tony tells me conversationally. “Some people think it was younger—a little creepily younger, in some corners of The Internet. But I was…well, not pure as the driven snow, but I didn’t know anyone Biblically until then.”

Public image is a sinister remora in the life of a superhero. These people, after all, dress rather noticeably while saving the world—and our known Universe—from muggers, murderers, crooks, baddies, villains, aliens and threats of all description. Most folks feel indebted to these deities—in some cases literally—who keep life on this blue and green rock relatively stable.

So why sex, then? The publication I write for is in no danger of falling victim to the Buzzfeeds and HuffPo’s of the world. Do people really want to know the intimate details of those among us with powers beyond the ordinary?

Perhaps it’s a boon that Tony Stark approached my editor when news broke of our endeavor to slip beneath the spandex. It’s fitting one so cavalier and celebrated would gladly, as he put it, “pop the article’s cherry.”

“I’m a man, man,” Tony laughs as we sit and drink. “I suppose that’s a little politically incorrect, but there you have it. I’ve never lied about my preference for the finer things, and what’s finer than doing the deed?”

He’s been with supermodels, scientists, athletes and foreign royalty. In the early 2000’s, paparazzi photos taken of him naked on the roof of a Dubai penthouse were the second most popular image searched on the then brand new Google Images—the first most popular image being Jennifer Lopez’s iconic emerald-green Grammy’s dress.

Tony doesn’t have sour grapes towards J.Lo.

Or the press for invading his privacy.

“What can I say? I think I’ve got a nice cock, so I’m not going to complain.”

Some might find male showboating crude or reprehensible. I myself rather like displays of virility, so long as the man putting them on can back it up. I need scarcely say Tony Stark can back it up like a Tonka truck. He’s completely at ease with who he is, where he is, and what he’s done. Even not being consistently popular with the public doesn’t seem to be of a bother to him.

“I gave up being popular after Afghanistan. And really, the only time you should give a crap about how well-liked you are by people you don’t really want to be around is in high school.”

High school—the period in which Tony lost his virginity—becomes the main focus of our conversation for the better part of our two hours together. As it turns out, these formative years were inherent in making Tony the iron man he is today.

The place: Berkshire School. The time: the early 1980’s. A time when America was bouncing back, blind optimism was the name of the game, and teenagers ruled everything. For the son of a billionaire, high school was Tony Stark’s smorgasbord. He excelled academically, (with relative ease I hasten to add) and collected around him a cluster of school chums—a sort of prototype Avengers but with less altruistic service to humanity.

“We were shit-disturbers,” Tony says. “Low adult supervision combined with haywire hormones makes for a potent cocktail. And when you have that much money and privilege, it turns into _Lord of the Flies_ with blazers and hot meals three times a day.”

There’s no fond gleam in Tony’s eyes as he reminisces. It’s almost with an airy forlornness that he tells me of his teenage antics—sneaking alcohol, rewiring the brand new computer system, and sneaking out to skinny dip in the local public pool. Of course, there’s underage drinking, mild drug experimentation and reckless driving.

“Oh, and mutual masturbation,” he adds as an after thought. “That is what your readers care about, right Sim?”

When I tell Tony his personal growth and experience with relationships and sex might also prove of interest, he only shakes his head.

“Don’t be so naïve.”

What could easily by a Springsteenian “Glory Days” is more an exercise in self-reproach.

“I have more of kids in my life than I ever thought these days,” he explains. “I guess just seeing it from this vantage point—look, it’d be great if I could say I think it was all fun and games. But we were blind and it’s a miracle we didn’t get into any serious trouble.”

I assure Tony he can’t be too hard on his younger self. The stars haven’t quite cleared from my eyes. He’s made me feel so at ease. And our interview has taken a turn I didn’t expect.

“We ran a porn ring,” Tony tells me. “Not producing, thank Christ. But back then you could get hard copy VHS and skin mags. It was a currency, and me and my little gang had it going for almost the entirety of our time together.”

Using his father’s money, Tony tells me he would go into the town closest to Berkshire, purloin all the 80’s porn he could find, and then he and his friends would distribute it to their classmates—and even a few gym coaches.

“Now that,” he says, “is something I miss from back then. The Golden Age of the Porno. All the shit on the Internet these days…there’s no panache. Like everything, it’s instant gratification. Back then you had at least ninety minutes of just why the pool boy and Mrs. So-And-So are getting their freak on. Even the professional shit they make today has no style to it.”

Back then, a porn actor could make millions and settle quite comfortably. These days, anyone with a camera phone can strike it lucky on LubeTube.

Perhaps we’ve reached some sort of Freudian breakthrough. Did exposure to this sacred stock of skin perhaps color Tony Stark’s appetite for the company of his fellow human?

“Now Sim, you’re smarter than that.” It isn’t patronizing, either. He really does seem mildly perturbed that I’ve stooped to something so seemingly beneath me. Is it any wonder the man leads the Earth’s greatest superhero team?

“It wasn’t the porn,” he elaborates. “Same as slasher films don’t breed serial killers. It made me hungrier for sex, sure, but even after I started having it, I didn’t stop watching it.”

Does he still?

“No. I’ve got a great thing going on, and it doesn’t interest me anymore.”

Neither do supermodels, actresses, scientists, athletes and foreign royalty. The stallion has been tamed. Certain members of the male persuasion—the adult versions of Tony’s old Berkshire friends and their modern teenage incarnations—would shake their heads and say “goddamn, there goes another one.” But another what?

“It’s not fun being horny all the time,” Tony explains after the conversation turns to his life now. “That’s why we want nothing more than to get off when it’s gnawing at us. And that’s what’s so great about settling down. Not the easy access, but the realization that sex isn’t the only thing in life—or love, even.”

Tony rubs the back of his head, self-consciously. The bravado’s fled, and it hits me just what he is—who he was before Iron Man—that the notable lothario and bad boy of the philanthropist-genius set lost his parents quite young, and lacked something profound.

He apologizes to me. “I guess this wasn’t quite as Penthouse Forum as your readers might have hoped. If that’s what you’re after, I’ve got tons—hot tub hookups, threeways, limo sex…”

And, of course, juicy details about his experiences with men.

It’s too crass.

Especially after the little glimpse I’ve gotten into the heart of Tony Stark.


	2. Kinsey and Radium Condoms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain America opens up about having to learn about eighty plus years of sexual revolution in the space of a decade. He also waxes about the works of Alfred Kinsey, and alarms Sim with the experience of trying out a radium condom.

Talking to Captain America about sex is humiliating. For the both of us, I imagine—but more so for me then for him. Yes, gentle reader, I admit it: I, Simran Kaushal, sexual scholar, First of His Name, Writer of Advice and King of the Unabashed, squirm as I sit opposite Steve Rogers outside Deja Brew on 18th West and 29th. The brisk autumn air is doing nothing to alleviate the heat in my face as I shuffle awkwardly through my notepad (yes, I still use paper) and try to remove myself from the situation.

Outwardly, Steve is younger than my thirty-three years. He’s got the build of a man in his mid to late twenties—one who frequents the gym and lives on a diet of high-protein and low carb intake. You could easily mistake him for the kind of person who’d loiter at a pool table with his friends and brag about his latest Tinder conquest.

It’s only up close that you see the ephemeral it—and it doesn’t take long to grasp said ephemera. Steve Rogers looks like he’s about ready to crawl out of his skin, find the nearest exit and hoof it back home. He is, in short, distinctly uncomfortable and trying not to show it.

So maybe I’m wrong, about which of us is more thoroughly not wanting to be here sipping a mocha latte.

I can’t ask him about sex, can I? He speaks with a care lost in this day and age of rapid, thoughtless communication. About him hangs the air of loss only found in people of a certain age—people who’ve live through the worst of what humanity can do and experience. I don’t need to explain why. You know the story—the super serum, the fighting in World War II—the decades and decades preserved in ice.

How in the multiverse am I going to talk to him about sex?

It takes about ten minutes—and a rather fashionable person in a power suit with an Annie Lennox haircut walking by—for Steve to break the ice (no pun intended.)

“When I was younger,” he says, “the only women who could get away with dressing like men were movie stars. Katharine Hepburn had her slacks, and Marlene Dietrich—don’t even get me started.” The air of loss around him only intensifies.

He’s remembering the life he knew.

I ask him if he finds it strange—after all, there are still a great many in the present who can’t wrap their heads around the construct of gender performance.

Again, Steve seems to be choosing his words. If more people were as careful with how they communicated, there’d probably be less money in the pockets of the Zuckerburg’s and Dorsey’s of the world.

“To be honest…it took me more time than people would like to think.”

For all his alienness to the ebbs and tides of modernity, Steve is on the ball when it comes to public perception. He more than any other Avenger has become a poster child for the all-American good ole boy archetype which went out pretty much at the same time Cap went missing. He’s talked to teens about drug awareness, has done instructional videos for self-defense, and shaken hands with foreign dignitaries. Yet he’s self-aware on a level few truly are.

“I had to really dig deep,” Steve explains. “To absorb almost seventy years of everything—pop culture and just plain culture is hard enough. Then add the expectation of just being okay with it because you have to be. Because that’s what’s expected of you.”

It’s amazing that I was so reticent to start this interview. Now that the spigot’s been open, the sap is just gushing forth—and yes, I’m completely aware of the entendre.

“Back when I was growing up,” Steve continues, “you didn’t talk about sex, much less be accepting of things like sexual liberation and different sexual orientations. So to wake up with all this—“ he gestures at the air—“on top of everything else…” And then he’s silent again. Searching for the right thing to say because he wants, at least in my estimate, to be understood more than anything else.

We take things for granted these days. Even with all the fights for equity and respect, there’s a running theme in we who’ve inherited the Earth that accepting the lay of the land is the mean—anything else is outlying. It is as it should be, yes—I am loath to take the side of the close-minded. But we are standing on the shoulders of not only giants who moved mountains to get us here, but also the course of history. Look back and you’ll find the peaks and valleys of tolerance. It might surprise you to know that in the Wild West, for example, homosexuality was accepted but not advertised. Viking women could divorce their husbands and own property until the culture was cut down by the rise of monotheism. The years buttressed by the Spanish Flu and the Great Depression were revolutionary in sexual appetites, mores and behaviours. History as it happens shapes how we act in the present, and not everyone can accept the change that easily.

Steve Rogers came of age in a time when all that was masculine was paramount. Men were even more worshipped and revered because they were, in the eyes of the culture, the ones out fighting and dying. They made the money and moved the gears behind the scenes. Did they have to be? No. But that was just the way it was, and few questioned it.

Still, I’m curious about what he really thinks of it all. He went missing they ear before Alfred Kinsey’s groundbreaking and controversial “ _Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male_.” Ten years passed between Steve’s disappearance and the work of Masters and Johnson. He missed the Sexual Revolution, its backlash, the normalization of pornography, the Stonewall Riots, and the music videos of Madonna.

To Steve, as I learn, it’s all a matter of radical acceptance. And perhaps a good dose of cherry-picking.

“I’m here,” he tells me. “I had to get used to it, so of course I have to let it wash over me. And when I really think about it, a lot of the things we did back then were sort of pointless. Controlled by people who had no business pulling the strings.

“You talked to your old man or your male friends about sex,” Steve goes on. “So of course you learn all about it from the male perspective and it makes it all seem only about what they say is acceptable. It was a form of totalitarianism. And I don’t stand for that.”

His upbringing, as it turns out, had more to do with this—well, this Captain America frame of thinking than anything.

“My parents lived through The Great War, the Spanish Flu and the Depression. By the time I came along, they were the kind of people who helped people no matter what. If someone came to you saying they were raped, you believed them. You sheltered them. You might even foot the bill for a certain kind of doctor. And if someone you knew was a confirmed bachelor—“ He hastens to extrapolate the euphemism for homosexual, but it’s not necessary. “Well, if you knew, you judged them based on what they did. How they treated others.”

It did get lost in the shuffle of the barracks, though.

“Look,” Steve says, “you’re surrounded by rowdy young guys, half of whom want to go out there and shoot the enemy, and half of whom just want to go home. Of course they’re going to be thoughtless and insensitive. It was like what I imagine a fraternity house being.”

I burn to ask him if there was ever any fraternization with his fellow soldiers—the sort of thing that would sell a million copies. But our conversation has been something beyond just the aesthetic of sex—it’s cutting to the heart of endemic problems in the society Steve made a name fighting for.

But he beats me to the punch. He grins, a grin that’s all apple pie and July Fourth football games. Lord, but it gives me the butterflies.

“I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you want to know.”

I nearly choke on the dregs of my coffee. Youthful as he appears, its like your granddad telling you about his intimate moments.

“I might not have been the ideal male specimen before the serum,” he tells me, “but I was still a teenaged boy. Luckily nothing serious ever came of it. But back then they had extra protection, what with the radium condoms.”

It takes only a few moments of staring into his earnest, lost boy face for me to realize he’s not joking.

He only smiles, having got the one-up on me.

“What about today?” I ask. “You’ve been here for over ten years now. Have you met anyone? Been with anyone?”

Again he looks adrift. Crows caw out from the trees in the little park nearby. A cab drifts by with a rush of disturbed air and a belch of exhaust.

“It’s easier now more than ever, isn’t it? All those—all those applications. I could, couldn’t I? But no. It just doesn’t seem right, to have it that easy. To get someone with just a few flicks of your screen and some well-placed words.”

There’s something there, just beyond the surface. It’s as plain as the nose on his face. But I feel profane for even having prodded him to tell me all he’s told me; and I’m not about to ask something that personal.

It would seem so un-American.


	3. Traitor, Lover, Avenger, Spy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During a covert mission, Natasha tells Sim about her decorated sex life, having to be a honey trap, and why she actually hates being called a role model. She then responds to an infamous question.

I’m trekking through the jungles of Brazil, swatting at gnats and trying not to die from humidity. The lush green canopy and call of wild animals does nothing to make me feel any better. But this is the only way Natasha Romanov could squeeze my interview into her busy schedule.

Those worried about a confidentiality breach needn’t fret. Natasha isn’t working. She’s just going to work—waiting here for orders from S.H.I.E.L.D. Today we’re going on a nature hike. My calves burn. Natasha is already outstripping me by three strides.

She sought me out. My first two interviews with her Avengers colleagues piqued her interest. So far I’ve been in her company for two hours, and all we’ve really done is hike up eyebrow trails and keep our ears pealed for any sounds of approach.

Being in her presence makes me immediately fall into line. Were a stampede of wild bulls to come charging around the corner, and Natasha bid me shield her and sacrifice myself, I would do it. Certainly her dagger-edged beauty has something to do with it. Her legend precedes her, too. But Natasha Romanov, as she would tell later, was born to command.

“It does extend to my personal life,” she tells me hours later. We’re sitting on the veranda of the finest house in a small village. The sun is setting, and she’s plied us both with local cuisine. “I suppose people are intimidated—especially men. I don’t mean to make them think I’m some sort of Amazon warrior, but they do seem to shrink around me.” She chuckles to herself. “Not that it stops them from trying.”

I posit—carefully as I can so as not to offend—that it’s because men are conditioned to think they’re in charge.

“Definitely. It’s why I try my damndest not to be too furious at all the sexist bullshit. I see it more as ignorance—Cap told you all about that, though.” Here she harkens back to my last interview.

Ever since her identity was made public, Natasha has been the subject of varying sexual discourse. Straight guys want to know how she is in bed; straight women want to know how she stays fit. The Gays have made her their new icon right next to Beyoncé and Gaga. And of course there are some whoremongers out there who think she’s improper—especially in her homeland.

“I think the only person Putin hates more than me is Angela Merkel,” Natasha laughs. “Could have worse company.”

Americans who bemoan the double-standard have never been to Russia.

“It’s the same, but turned up ever-so slightly. The biggest expectation is that women stay in their place—wherever men want them to be. So not only do you have the same norms: stay in the home, please your husband etc—but you also have the allure of the mysterious Russian beauty. The icy Bond bitch who will fuck you and then let you slap her in the face when she speaks out of turn.”

Here’s another thing you ought to know about Natasha Romanov—she curses like a lighthouse keeper. I, having grown up in the comparable decorum of a Punjabi household, find something of a kindred spirit in her lax use of profanity. Her detractors, however, will likely pounce.

“Fuck them,” is all Natasha has to say. “I’m nobody’s role model. The pressure to be seen as this idol for young girls and women the world over? Not my job. Not the job of anyone in the public eye.”

She fell rather ass-backwards into public view, given the Chitauri invasion a few years back. Since then her covert operations have had to be even more secretive. It’s why, for the most part, she’s barely seen in public. Years and years of spy-work taught her how to disappear at the word-go.

Is dating, then, out of the question? One would certainly hope so given how many pithy Internet articles are written about just whom Black Widow is seeing behind the scenes.

“I get lonely.” A faint, victorious smile. “Sometimes I get really lonely. I’ve also got years of experience setting honey traps. You learn how to give people what they want—how to have them eating out of the palm of your hand.” This is something I could very well believe.

What, then, does Natasha look for? A Alpha male? An easily submissive man? Women who need to not feel so alone tonight?

Whips and chains?

Cool your jets. She’s actually looking for one thing and one thing only.

“Intensity.” She sits back, watching the shadows swallow the trees around is. “When it’s something that short-lived, it has to burn like fire. Whoever it is, they have to be on the same page as me. No bones about it. I’ve sensed hesitation before, and it’s made me turn tail. I don’t want someone getting the wrong idea.”

It’s a remarkably secure space to occupy, for someone who lives abreast of danger every day. Again, Natasha is quick to disabuse anyone of such comfortable notions. Sex isn’t some sort of poetic refuge for her. Like everything else, it is a thing she knows she wants, and how she wants it.

“We’re entitled to good sex, I think. There’s precious little in life we’re entitled to, and good sex is one of those things.”

It is here that I err. I’m too caught up, I’ll admit. She’s more than I ever thought she would be. Not just in the adolescent fantasy term, but as a subject—as a person.

I make the mistake of elaborating on some pseudo-social subject. And suddenly she turns to ice. Her gaze pinions me to the spot, and I feel about three inches high.

“Everyone, Sim,” she tells me. “Men, women, and those who don’t identify. You take a look out how much chaos there is just in our universe—love and sex are the only defenses we have against complete annihilation.”

It takes me a solid five minutes to collect myself again. I squeak out an apology. I tell her I’m usually not so single-minded.

“And you won’t be after this, I’ll bet.” Luckily she seems to forgive the lapse—or perhaps she hasn’t, and just wants the interview to end, now that I’ve displayed how stupid I really am.

“There it is,” she says. “I’ve gone and intimidated you, haven’t I?”

Why should I be intimidated? Would I still shirk had her fellow heroes of the male gender gone and cut me to the quick? It’s possible. After all, they have a range of abilities that could end my life. But they’re heroes, so I have nothing to fear from them.

“Passion,” Natasha explains. “It’s a real bitch of a double-edged sword. You, Sim, were passionately involved in that talk we were having just now. So much that you lost your head and said something you normally wouldn’t have.”

I try to apologize—again. And she’s having none of it.

“It’s the variety. The spice, to borrow a Frank Herbert term. All the screw-ups and mistakes and thoughtlessness. In life, I enjoy it. When you go through a program where there’s so much rigidity, passion becomes a real dopamine hit. I love it. It’s what makes us us.”

That, then, she tells me, is where the intensity in her lovers comes from. That is why she needs someone who can meet her on the same level. It’s why she despises being a role model—the perfection would feel too much like suffocation. For Natasha Romanov, it truly is better to live and let live. She did, after all, once work for a government hellbent on a tyrannical sameness.

I leave my interview feeling a little like I understand her, yet still miles off the mark. And that strikes me as the entire point. You think you know Natasha Romanov, and even when you do, you don’t. It’s an alluring fantasy—the aloof, cold Russian spy archetype so prevalent in media of the 50’s and 60’s.

But you don’t go to bed, or an interview with the Black Widow or even her civilian identity.

You do so with whomever the hell she wants you to be with, and if you’re not in the same frame of mind, then may God have mercy on your soul.


	4. Mister Mile High

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James Rhodes and Sim chat during the former’s layover in Canada. Wilson tells Sim about the difficulties of being Tony Stark’s wingman. They pontificate the mechanics of a successful mile high experience, and the problems of dating while being a hero.

Colonel James Rhodes and I are watching snow nearly bury Calgary International Airport. It’s the beginning of November, and he’s returning from a conference in the little-known Canadian city. I am here visiting family, and sheer happenstance made our dates line up. Then again, considering whom he rubs elbows with, some sort of cosmic being might have intervened.

And if they have, then they’ve got very unusual (and good) taste in literature.

“Your readers are asking for more sex stories,” he tells me with a smirk. We’re nestled in the corner of the airport, waiting for the storm to stop and the tarmac to be cleared. “It’s a good thing my parents don’t read anything other than the Chicago Tribune.”

As it transpires, Mr. and Mrs. Harold and Eliza Rhodes aren’t quite so prudish—or unaware of their only son’s sex life.

“They were hippies. And when I say that, I don’t just mean they went to Woodstock. They were full-on Haight Ashbury, Morrison and Hendrix loving hippies. They didn’t grow out of it until I was born, and after Manson they lived all over the country before my dad found a good job in the Windy City.”

How in the world did James’ family go from that to the progenitors of a decorated military colonel-turned-superhero?

“Oil industry,” James tells me. “Once the money started flowing, then all the fun shit disappeared.” For them, maybe, but not, as James tells me, for himself.

“They made lots of money, and I kind of reaped the benefits. I was a hellion. Getting into trouble, rolling with other people like me.” It’s a veritable Tony Stark story, so perhaps it’s not a surprise that Falcon and Iron Man have become such close friends.

Unlike Tony Stark, who continued getting away with everything until he disappeared in the deserts of Afghanistan, James Rhodes had to face reality quite early.

His parents sent him to military school when he was seventeen.

“There were no porno rings, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was strict, and I pretty much had to sink or swim. Nobody was coming to get me out.”

When he emerged from school some time later, he was more in line with the straight-laced sharp shooter Americans have come to know and love. A man doesn’t become a colonel by goofing off and absconding with beautiful women.

“But I wasn’t a zombie, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s actually kind of appropriate we’re here in this airport right now.”

And just why, I wonder, is that?

Ladies, gentlemen and those who do not identify, Colonel James “Warmachine” Rhodes is a member of the mile high club. In fact, his exploits thirty thousand feet in the air are so that he’s known in some circles as “Mister Mile High.”

“I can’t explain it,” he tells me. “I never flew very much when I was younger, so I don’t think it’s got anything to do with that. I’m sort of a serial monogamist, and the women I’ve been with have all had the common trait of being pretty adventurous.”

According to a recent survey, 74% of people who have had sex in airplanes have done so with partners. So the fantasy of meeting a stranger on a plane and slipping into the john for a quick one is really just that—a fantasy.

And it’s one which, moreover, holds no appeal for James.

“See, I can’t wrap my head around hookup culture. I guess it just runs counter to a lot of the things I had instilled in me at school. It’s weird, given how my parents behaved when they were free-loving and dropping acid.”

Circling back to the subject if joining the auspices of the mile high club, James laments that he hasn’t partaken since being a superhero. Not, as he tells me, because the opportunity has yet to present itself—S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Avengers have a fleet of airborne craft at their disposal. Mostly, James doesn’t have time for the kind of romance he’d rather pursue.

“I need to be in love with someone. I think you can fall in and out of love multiple times. There’s a misconception that to be, y’know, really kinky or sexually adventurous that you have to be slutty. It isn’t true. I’m the kind of guy who wants to have great sex, but only with the people I love.”

Averse to dating apps, Colonel Rhodes has been in something of a dry spell. But he’s optimistic. “We’re meant to fall in and out of love with different people. There’s just no way, especially with how fast things are these days, that you can just find one person. I mean, if you do, great—but I doubt it’s the first one you’re ever with.”

I press James for more details on his first time in an airplane. He was still in the military, on leave, and living with an ex-girlfriend in Virginia.

“We were flying to see her family, who lived in Oregon, and it was a long-ass flight. We talked about it—sort of as a joke at first. One thing led to another and the next thing you know, we’re both crammed in the bathroom.”

Since then, James has found himself in much more austere aircraft.

“It definitely kept the spark going,” he tells me. “I think it was just the variety. You know—the idea of like ‘We’re actually doing this when we could just be at home.’ It’s sort of insane. And it’s not just bathrooms. There’s planes with lounges, bars—it’s amazing.”

Sex in an airplane seems the kind of thing one would think of Tony Stark doing. I wish I didn’t keep thinking about James’ teammate and friend—but somehow I can’t help but wonder how this outwardly clean-cut man of the military ended up the confidant of one of our nation’s more notorious playboys.

“Oh, I couldn’t stand the little bastard at first,” James says with a laugh. “He pushed every one of my buttons. Even with all the airplane sex and stuff, I was still a pretty hardened rule-follower. But that’s the nice thing about knowing Tony so well—he leads by example. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t always play by the book. There’s worse things than having sex with your girlfriend in an airplane.”

Stark, as I’m sure my readers know by now, has sort of matured with age. I find it fascinating that, while Tony has become mellower, Rhodes seems to be coming into his own. There have been rumours of his taking over The Avengers for some time. And this admittance of his preferred sexual predilection only makes me feel even more like James is stepping up to the plate.

“It never crossed my mind in a million years,” he admits. “Tony’s been through way more than me, though, so I think he’s got a right to kick up his feet and relax. I’ve never been in competition with him—although I think this interview might make him spit out his cognac.”

It’s a bit shocking to me to hear. I’d assumed they shared everything, as is the wont of teammates and friends to do. But here is where James starts drawing the line.

“He never asked. Although if he had, I could have given him some pointers. There’s ways to make love in the stratosphere without throwing out your back or screwing your neck up. To go back to that first time, I actually gave myself a Charley horse, so it wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But there you go, Sim—practice makes perfect. Military school 101. The more you do a thing, the better you get at it.”

And that is where Tony Stark and James Rhodes differ.

“Tony’s got to get it right the first time, or he becomes his own worst enemy. He knows it, and he works on it. Me? I like being put through my paces. That’s the only way you learn.”

Wise words, from someone who could, quite literally, write a book on the kind of sex some people believe to be an urban legend. But, as I’m sure you’ll agree, Colonel James Rhodes is full of surprises. He’s the kind of man who doesn’t need to advertise—or rather, posture.

He finds my pathology rather amusing.

“That’s good to hear. It’s a great way of illustrating the before-and-after of me. When I was up to no good, all I ever did was strut around.”

Does this mean my article isn’t helping his post-military school lease on life?

As it transpires, no.

“So far I could divide my life into three portions. Snot-nosed little punk, decorated military service, and Avenger. Who I am as an Avenger is sort of a collective whole.” He grins. “It’s arithmetic: bratty James plus Military James equals Warmachine.”

And, as he tells me just before our flight cancellation is announced indefinitely, Warmachine James is hankering to add another notch to the mile high post.


	5. Self-Love and Sexual Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanda Maximoff surprises Sim with a remarkably insightful talk about having a sex life after trauma. She discusses what it’s like to have an unconventional relationship, and why she has no patience for prudes.

Picture this—a dark, cavernous space packed tightly with obstacles all moving in wild ignorance. Lights flash in sporadic colours. Sound blares in a non-stop, deafening rhythm you can feel deep in your bones. Your senses can’t quite figure out where to drop anchor because there’s too much capturing your attention.

To me, this is what it feels like inside _Maenad_ , a trendy nightclub nestled in the heart of San Francisco’s downtown core.

To Wanda Maximoff, it’s a refuge.

It’s my belief that this is why she’s chosen Maenad’s for our interview. She frequents the club—has done ever since she chose to settle, however temporarily, on the West Coast.

Outwardly, she looks like any other young person enjoying a night of EDM, other bodies and the odd cocktail. Hair in a fun, bouncy style; what amounts to a crimson slip hugging her lithe body. But unlike the cornucopia of people on the dance floor and at the bar, Wanda is sitting in a private booth, out of the sound, and at a safe distance to observe the sights. A phalanx of drinks surround her—she likes to sample, she tells me. And she’s also got the array ready just in case I need reinforcement following my trek from “The Floor” to our private booth.

I take the first pornstar I can wrap my fingers around and collapse, almost winded, into the seat next to her. She looks vindicated—perhaps she knows of my dislike of the club scene?

“Not everyone can get lost the way I can,” Wanda tells me, her voice husky eddy of Eastern European roots. “It’s why I came here. To San Francisco. You can disappear in the city, and when that becomes boring, there’s woods for miles around.”

She also likes the fog and the thunderstorms. Anything, as she believes, that “takes it out of here and puts it out there.” She points first to her temple and then to the air.

People have been somewhat gun-shy of the so-called Scarlet Witch since she was first brought onto the Avengers roster. Not only did she join during a time of public backlash against superheroes, but she has been noted for her struggles with mental illness. It’s a result of the trauma of her years in captivity with her late brother, Pietro. And even then, as Wanda lets me know, she wasn’t so sure she would have emerged from her early years unscathed.

“Sokovia isn’t a kind place to grow up.”

For someone the public loves to call crazy, Wanda is very self-aware. Not many people could look at their penchant for nightclubs, forests and big cities with overcast weather and let you know exactly why it’s their cup of tea.

But Wanda does.

“It comes with the territory. I have to know. What is the saying? Knowing is half the battle? But the thing about battles is that they’re only pieces of the war. You still go on fighting. It never stops.”

She’s at a good place right now. The move from New York City certainly helped. She’s still in touch with her Avengers cohorts, but this is her me-time.

“You have to heal after trauma,” she tells me. “Otherwise you run from it. You will always be afraid.”

I’m too nervous—cowed by the thriving scene of Maenad's and also the chance of saying anything potentially triggering—to do more than down a few more drinks. Wanda, I notice, has barely touched her sidecar.

Only after she starts laughing do I realize how little I—the interviewer—have spoken.

“Let’s talk about sex, Simran.” She leans forward, as if I’m amusing her. This must be what it was like to know Carrie Fisher, I think. To be in the presence so in command of their sense of self, yet also constantly walking the line of flux and flow.

I take my time—mostly because my poor choice to drink like a fish is catching up with me. Gauging my surroundings, I settle on the obvious.

She frequents nightclubs. Does that, then, mean that she, like many, is on the prowl?

Again, she laughs.

“Absolutely not. I don’t think anyone here would touch me to slap me. I’m the crazy chick, remember?” She comes here, she tells me, to feel lost.

Sex for Wanda, though, is a rather important element in healing.

“I’ve been reading a book called ‘Getting Off,’” Wanda tells me. “All about the joys of masturbation for women. It’s helped quite a lot, actually. One of the things they tell you is how sex can be healing for people with trauma. But first you have to actually believe you’re worthy of pleasure—and that it isn’t evil.”

As one of the ultimate acts of connection, sex can be useful in helping people transcend painful experiences. But as Wanda rightly put, many victims of trauma—especially those with PTSD—find it difficult to either engage in the act at all, or experience it in a balanced way. I’m rather pleased to hear that Wanda has been so proactive in her approach to sex, given all she deals with.

“It took a while,” she tells me. “I was quite young when all of that happened—the explosion, joining HYDRA, losing my brother.” Adolescence is a crucial time for the development of the self; for many teens, sex is a vital avenue of expression, connection, identity and even self-esteem.

“I had it quite skewed,” Wanda tells me. “I thought of it as this wicked thing—something I wasn’t supposed to want. It scared the shit out of me, if you’ll pardon my language.”

Her late brother, she tells me, didn’t offer much help because he himself was dealing with trauma all his own before losing his life.

“Being a boy, I think Pietro would have gone the opposite way from me—they can do that, you know. Men. Hypersexuality. Satyriasis. Engaging compulsively without joy.”

Her eyes fix me to the spot. I’m too tipsy to realize at first, but then it hits me. Wanda Maximoff just quoted _The Big Lebowski_. I stare at her like a fish without water, and she laughs that high-octane thrill ride laugh again.

I compose myself and gulp down some water. I want to know more. She’s intrigued me. I’m ashamed to admit that even I didn’t expect her to be like this—charming and self-possessed. Most people walk around in a haze of ignorance, so to meet someone so often labeled as “unstable” only to find her a beat ahead of everyone else—it’s humbling.

But that’s all part of the problem. After all, isn’t what we call “crazy” in actuality “different”?

Wanda tells me that the big turn of events came when she fell in love for the first time.

“It wasn’t the way it is in those awful romance novels. I thought about sex the way a teenaged boy did.” She scoffs. “Purity is overrated. I can’t stand prudes. They don’t like thinking about things the way that they actually are. Humans—anything alive, really—are sexual, aren’t they? Pretending like it isn’t is a waste of time.”

Romance opened up Wanda’s mind. But the experience was actually quite frightening for her.

“You live so long repressing and being afraid of things like that, and you want to run to the nuns and priests and get an exorcism.” But the man she fell for meant too much, and Wanda refused to buckle.

She read books—reading is another way she gets lost. Steinem, Helen Gurley Brown, Dr. Ruth—she even had frank talks with her female teammates.

“It is a bit of a boy’s club,” she says of The Avengers, “and they still think of me like a loony child. I wasn’t going to ask them about it. But Natasha and Carol and even Pepper and Maria were very helpful.”

Once Wanda hit upon the link between sex and healing, she found her mental health beginning to improve somewhat.

“It’s very different from therapy. I’m in control. I learn to breathe and meditate. And then I touch myself.” She smirks, knowing she just dropped another pop culture reference.

Our journey with mental health is just that—a journey. As Wanda said, coping with these problems are smaller skirmishes in the larger war. So she knows full well that bringing herself to orgasm without guilt is leagues away from the actual deed.

“I’m not that stupid,” she tells me. “But for him, I want to be right. And he’s not exactly experienced either, so it will be good for us to explore this together.”

I want to get out of Maenad's—to get some air. But Wanda, apparently, usually hangs out until closing time. She makes it quite clear she isn’t going anywhere.

Before I take my leave, though, I want to know one thing—who is this mystery man? The one who opened her up to this vista of possibilities, so intrinsic to her recovery?

Again, she smiles at me. She raises her hand, and does this thing with her fingers. The cups and tumblers on the table float a few inches, carried on translucent red ribbons, before settling back down undisturbed.

“I could tell you that, Simran—but then I’d have to kill you.”


	6. Sex God

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All those stereotypes about Vikings and sex? Turns out they’re true and then some. Thor manages to make Sim flustered as he opens up about deity sex, orgies and sexual labels.

Thor is a sex god.

No, really. Google it. To the people of the Norse Lands, he was the god of storms, strength, and fertility. I confess that, when I began this journey into the sexual lives of superheroes, I was itching to be in the God of Thunder’s presence. How often do you get to speak directly to someone whom, until quite recently, was merely a myth?

And yes, he’s also devastatingly handsome—not to mention chivalrous. I don’t know why, but in my sick and twisted head, I’d envisioned our meeting as being something akin to a clinch cover. Windswept moors, lots of visible abdominal muscles and myself, helpless to resist.

Because this is reality, I broke even. There are no moors. Instead, I look on angry waves as the fishing boat I’m on bobs to and fro. A mass of iron, Charlotte Bronte-style clouds spans the horizon. And it’s piss-pouring rain. I am less dressed in clothes about to come apart at the heaving bosoms I do not possess. Instead, I’m in an orange rain poncho given my by the vessel’s captain. We’re keeping an eye out for poachers, and Thor is aboard—our secret weapon.

My Kathleen Woodiwiss fantasies will have to wait. The horizon is empty of other vessels, but that could change at a moment’s notice.

“Your writing is most intriguing, Simran,” he tells me as we stand in the middle of the deck. “Although I was anticipating something bawdier when Tony Stark gave me your magazine.”

Wonderful. Now I’ve disappointed my own personal Fabio. When I tell Thor it’s up to the subject of my interview to determine what they choose to reveal, and that it’s often out of my hands, he laughs. Thor has a laugh like his element—thunderous but far more pleasant. Some of the chill goes out of me. Even a little bit of my seasickness dissipates.

“I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. The pleasures of the flesh are one of the few joys known in Midgard, or anywhere else.”

Midgard, in case you don’t know, is Earth—the realm between Asgard where Thor and his other gods hold sway.

I ask him the most burning question—how is it different between here and there? My interview with Captain America led to a far more introspective place than I was anticipating. Will Thor be as reflective?

No. He’s not. Not even one bit. I pray you’re sitting down as you read this.

Thor loves sex. Like, really loves sex. God of fertility, remember?

My surprise isn’t all that mystifying to him. He’s been visiting us for some time now, and has picked up on the more Puritanical aspects of our race.

He doesn’t agree with it, though.

“In my homeland, no bones are minced about the natural act. Whichever way it chooses to represent itself in a person, it is accepted. I was quite an early taker to the force of physical love, but that is because my mother is the goddess of love. It’s only natural I’d be curious about all the things my cock can do for me and others.”

I nearly fall off the deck—not out of the blood rushing to my head, but because of the cresting waves. But Thor seizes me as if I weight nothing and sets me to rights. He smells like coriander, musk and male—whatever that means.

I shouldn’t be so gob smacked. But people also shouldn’t be as weird about sex as we tend to be. What could be natural than the very thing that has proliferated life itself? It’s all a matter of modernity. The Vikings certainly weren’t prudish about sex. 

The folk who first worshiped Thor’s pantheon were remarkably ahead of their time in terms of sex. While survival in the oft-frigid Norse Lands was most important, they could appreciate sex with the best of them. Women could divorce their husbands on grounds of being bad in bed. Sexual assault was frowned upon even in the heat of pillaging the coastlines.

“It must be consensual, Simran. The wax you dip your wick in should be willing, lest the length of it be snipped.”

I notice the parallel between himself and Captain America once more. Thor is a transplant from a mystical realm. The mores of Asgard don’t essentially travel over to Earth, where things—especially in Western culture—are so Puritanical.

Thor and I share our mutual sense of bewilderment at this.

“I loathe it heartily. Yet what can I do but accept it? I will not subjugate the people of Midgard simply on the ground of their difference from my own people. You and yours are not entirely lost. Do you not have festivals celebrating sex on this planet?”

Thor seems most surprised when I list some of the global festivals I’m familiar with. When I tell him about Kanamara Matsuri—the Japanese festival celebrating the human phallus—he seems thoroughly interested.

“That may be something to bring home with me. But do they not have a festival for women?”

When I’m not forthcoming—mostly because there aren’t any I can think of—Thor seems perturbed. It is, he tells me, a problem with us Midgardians—the way we’ve denigrated women.

We frustrate him, despite the fact that he can’t seem to get enough of us. Like any good parent, there’s times he wants to be away from us. And then there are times, like today, when he wants to give us his strength.

Between avenging and his godly duties, there must be little time for love—right?

Wrong.

“I’ve a woman I love deeply,” he tells me. His eyes, a cerulean, bodice-ripper blue, suddenly lose their intensity. He’s a boy now, infatuated by love, and it makes me feel like the worse kind of pervert for even having asked.

“Her skin is smooth as honey, and her hair softer than the spring. Her lips can bring me to my knees, and her soul is stouter than a Valkyrie’s and kinder than sunlight. When she and I are apart, nights seem longer, and the cold more cruel. I ache in places inside me I never thought I had.”

Have you ever had a Norse god who looks like the personification of male beauty wax poetic about the woman he loves? I recommend you try it sometime. Although make sure to have emergency First Aid available in the event that the blood rushing to your face makes you pass out.

Thor and his ladylove have been together for a few years now. Theirs is a private relationship, and I don’t press the issue. How could I, when he nearly bowled me over with his ode to her radiance? Tolkien himself couldn’t have conceived such a poem.

Whoever she is, Thor has been open with her (honesty and communication are quite valuable to Asgardians—funny, that).

“She knows of my sordid history—the other women, the men I’ve been with—the orgies, the álfar (elves), drevgar (dwarves) and other assorted vættir (the umbrella term for the Asgardian spirit-beings.)” He frowns. “She often wishes to hear of my exploits in nude wrestling with my fellow warriors, but I cannot fathom why.”

At this point I fall flat on my ass. Thor offers me a strong hand and pulls me to me feet. But all the strength has nearly gone out of me.

“But friend Simran,” he says, rife with worry, “what is the matter?”

I stammer something about how flustered I am. And when he presses, I have to admit that I can’t help it—my mind is playing a fast-forward demo reel of what this god would look like _en flagrante delicto_.

“Why should that be cause for embarrassment? Am I not pleasing to your eye? And has our conversation thus far not been about the very subject of pleasure?”

Thor probably doesn’t realize how attractive he is. In Asgard, most folk are beautiful. To us—well, I’m not a poet, so I won’t even try.

Mercy shines on me in the form of a vessel coming over the horizon. The poachers are drawing near. Thor snaps to attention, and I grip the deck rail. This isn’t the first tight spot I’ve been in.

Besides, I’m confident Thor will wipe the floor with these chumps.

“I fear our conversation may be at an end, Simran.” He’s gone dangerous—Darkwing Duck style. My heart goes pitter-pat as he glares at the approaching ship. “I must away to a warmer place when I have finished here. I may delight in the fight for justice, but this ocean air is no good. I’ve frost coating my balls as we speak.”

With that, he goes to save the world; and I actually do collapse in a faint.


	7. Banner on the Edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce Banner knows the jokes everyone makes about him. This interview might make your pulse race, as the introverted scientist talks frankly about finding solace in improving his masturbation techniques.

Bruce Banner’s recent rental is Spartan as they come. The walls are a shade of robin’s egg blue covered in only a few plain-framed pictures. There are few knick-knacks to be found. Scented candles burn—a crisp, white woods smell direct from Bath and Body Works (of which Bruce is a proud frequent shopper) and the windows look out on a soothing forest scene. When I arrive—making sure to announce myself at the front gate—Bruce was in the midst of listening to an episode of Drew Ackerman’s “Sleep With Me” despite it’s being well after eleven in the morning.

Insomnia, he tells me, is a demon he actually bested a while back. Anxiety, on the other hand, is something he contends with on a daily issue. Listening to podcasts—having soothing conversations around him—keeps him on the level.

“I do like isolation.” Bruce seems relatively at ease around me—something he later tells me is born of practice. “But humans are social creatures. So casting the illusion of presence is helpful when I find myself getting a bit worn down by loneliness.”

He doesn’t drink caffeine; he eats a mostly vegan diet, but makes exceptions for cheese, and he makes sure to go for a walk in nature whenever he can. The Marie-Kondo style furnishings are a new feature—one he finds helpful.

“You don’t quite realize just how much your possessions possess you, until you find yourself hungry for more. It’s a feeling I really can’t stomach. It’s all too transient.”

Bruce is a scientist—a quite brilliant one. Beyond the realms of nuclear fusion and fission, he’s researched psychology immensely. Emotions fascinate him—how the influence people and how they’ve shaped our society. Like many men, Bruce lets me know that he went a long time not really paying attention to his thoughts and feelings.

Even after becoming The Hulk, he simply thought of emotions in terms of positive and negative—negativity being something he was constantly on the look for. After a while, though, Bruce saw his emotions in the sense of his work with physics.

“Positive charges, negative charges—it all boils down to the same thing. You need the impulse. It’s not the presence of these sensations, it’s how you engage with them.”

He’s done it all—mindfulness, meditation, cognitive behavioural therapy, radical acceptance. These days, Dr. Banner can experience mounting emotions without risk of “Hulking out.”

And even when he does let the green machine rule the roost, he’s found himself far more self-aware than before.

“There’s no loss of self,” he tells me. “I know where I am. Who I am. What I’m doing. But I still have all that strength. And the emotions are closer at hand.” It’s like sunburn, he tells me. He’s much, much more sensitive as The Hulk than he is as the sensitive man before me.

Troll through any online forum (which I really don’t recommend you do lest you want to waste your time irrevocably) and you’ll find lots of jabs about Dr. Banner. How do his pants not shred; is he able to have any fun at all without going green; and, of course, how can he have sex without his partner bursting like a melon?

Not that it’s anybody’s business, of course. But Bruce is used to it by this point. He’s quick to remind me—smiling a little—that he’s a genius. Creating denim which can expand as his form shifts was a cake-walk—although doing the opposite is impossible, so he’s gotten used to finding himself nude in public places on occasion.

“And define fun, Sim. Some people find going out and partying fun. It was never my animal. I was always a home-body—always wanting to read or do some math problems than go out and cut loose.”

As for the sex question—the crux of this article—Bruce is no prude.

“It was a problem for years. And I did feel a lot of shame and guilt surrounding it. Not that I was a virgin or anything, but after the Gamma incident, I was pretty much a monk.” At times, he couldn’t even get the beginnings of an erection without starting to approach the threat level.

“I used to wear an Apple watch to monitor my heart level.” His wrist, at present, is bare. I hazard a guess that he’s managed to get by without the constant checking.

“A lot of it is trusting myself. I’ve reached a good point.” He gestures at his surroundings. “It’s like anything you work towards—you have to change your lifestyle. But as for a current relationship—no. Not for a few years.”

He admits that, despite all the work he’s done on himself, he still worries about going too far. “I won’t put someone through that—especially someone I love. It’s too much of a risk.”

We’ve been mostly sitting at his kitchen table, drinking ginger tea while snow falls gently outside. Bruce sets his cup down, looks at me furtively—I feel rather like a trigonometry problem, and it’s somewhat disconcerting. After a few moments tick by (in my mind, that is—Dr. Banner doesn’t have clocks because he finds that they add stress to his routine) he cracks a smile. And then he offers to show me his exercise room.

I feel rather like Anastasia Steele approaching the Red Room—albeit with a man who is actually decent, respects boundaries and isn’t an asshole. Bruce leads me to his bedroom, unlocks a drawer and points at it. Peering in, I witness the last thing I expected.

It’s a chest of toys. I see vibrators, OhMiBods, lubricants, a fleshlight, cockrings and even a few poppers. My jaw is on the floor. Had Dr. Banner shown me a collection of dead animals, I’d have been less shocked.

“Here’s my therapy, Sim. At least, another form of it.”

Bruce Banner is a master of masturbation. He has a solid grasp on all sorts of self-love. His preferred method of late is edging—the art of pushing oneself so close to orgasm, only to pull back and stave off release as long as possible. It gets the heart rate elevated. It pushes him, as he tells me, as close to the precipice of Hulking out as possible. And doing so has made it far, far easier for him to keep the monster on the inside.

“I never would have expected it of myself, to find this kind of kink.” He’s showing off his toys—which are all squeaky clean, just so you know. “But I did what I do best. I researched. There’s a lot of bullshit out there about jerking off, but once you cut through it, there’s a lot of untapped scientific potential.”

Any idiot with a search engine can be exposed to the polarizing topic of self-love. Some people still equate it with psychological harm and pitiful losers. Others will hype it up to a transcendental experience in which human beings can achieve a sense of enlightenment. Some of claim that the technique of “jelqing” can help a man increase his penis size (the science is still out at that one.) For Dr. Banner, it started as a method of stress relief—which, coincidentally, is one of the proven pros of taking advantage of yourself.

“You release more than semen,” he tells me with a grin. “All this tension unwinds, if you do it properly.”

Properly, according to Bruce, does not mean rushed. “Most of us, when we masturbate, do it quickly—covertly. It’s tied in with the shame of it all. But it can be a sort of mindfulness exercise. Focus on your breathing. Take your time. Let yourself feel the pleasure.”

Bruce, though, took it one step further after he started his initial experiments. “I followed the trail of breadcrumbs, so to speak.” It’s why he invested in his little treasure trove. “Pleasure is a great way of managing emotional distress—as long as it doesn’t become addictive.” Finding that balance was a task for Bruce; but now, he tells me, he’s found the happiest medium.

“I ask myself what I want out of it. How I want to proceed. What kind of stimulation I want. And almost always, I find myself edging.”

It’s rare, especially in American culture, to find someone so frank about a topic that still carries a patina of the taboo.

“We’re knocking down all these idiotic barriers in our culture now. So why not add masturbation to the list? Besides, if you don’t want to talk about it, nobody is going to force you.”

I remind Bruce that he’s airing his dirty laundry to a reading public—many of whom will find his admission of emission quite controversial.

He doesn’t care a lick.

“They’ve seen me tearing through buildings and unconscious in craters with my goodies on display. There are worse things I could do.”


	8. Bucky Barnes Doesn't Want to Talk to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sim spends several grueling days attempting to track down a reluctant Bucky Barnes. Through interviewing those closest to him, he gleans only a fraction of insight into the Winter Soldier. But even that might be too much information.

History and James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes are as inexorably linked as gin and tonic, Sid and Nancy—war and peace. Like his good friend Steve Rogers, he’s a transplant from another time, albeit in a somewhat less—and in some ways more—polished sense. It is appropriate, then, that I open my profile with a small lesson in history as it pertains to my field.

For those too young to recall, Gay Talese’s historic profile of Frank Sinatra—entitled “ _Frank Sinatra Has a Cold_ ”—made waves for its groundbreaking style. Talese spent three months being rebuffed by Sinatra, and instead, pieced his Esquire profile around events he witnessed in Sinatra’s sphere, and anecdotes from people in Old Blue Eyes’ life.

I’m no Gay Talese. I’m more Pamela Des Barres—with the exception of not actually sleeping with my subjects. But it’s curious that I find myself in the same predicament as Talese did in the winter of 1965.

Bucky Barnes does not want to talk to me. I am stung. He did, after all, initially agree to our little _tête_ -à- _tête_ a few weeks ago. When I find myself once more in The Big Apple on assignment, Bucky proves elusive. News reaches me via his colleague Phil Coulson that the Winter Soldier has, in fact, reneged on his end of the bargain.

Coulson is perfectly apologetic—almost embarrassed for me. “He didn’t really consider what he’d have to talk about,” he tells me. “Understand, he’s not just time displaced like Cap—he was the victim of brainwashing and conditioning for the longest time.”

Of course I understand, but I can’t go back to my editors empty handed. Now that Bucky is playing the slippery fish, I’m determined to be the cormorant. It’s lousy weather in New York City; I have a boyfriend waiting for me back in Toronto, and I love a good chase more than denouncing the evils of truth and love.

Game on, Barnes.

Fortune is on my side. Prior to my defunct date with Bucky, I spoke to those closest to him. Talking to Captain America again seems moot—especially right out of the gate. There are, however, others who know Barnes well.

Tony Stark is only all too happy to oblige me. Like Sinatra, I find him with a cold, so we speak over Zoom instead of face to face. Bundled in a fluffy dark red bathrobe, Stark is quick to point out the obvious.

“He was never going to talk to you, Sim. You have to understand something about Bucky—he’s a wolf. Solitary, Y’know? Quiet even in the pack. It took a long time for him to ease into the team—mostly because of bad blood between us. But once he’s in your corner, he’ll walk to Hell for you.”

Certainly that makes for a compelling profile, but it isn’t a surprise. Barnes is shy of people, and has rarely been spotted in public the way his other teammates have. Is my mission, then, doomed? How can I paint a picture of the Winter Soldier’s sex life if I can’t find anything about him beyond “he’s solitary.”

Natasha Romanov comes to my aid a few days after my discussion with Stark. I’ve been researching lone wolves as a personality trait, and turning up empty handed.

“You remember what I told you about intensity, right?” She’s calling from somewhere she can’t disclose, and I won’t even hazard a guess at. “Bucky is that.” Not because they’ve slept together, she assures me. Although if Natasha were to be “shipped” with a teammate of the male persuasion, she lets me know it would be Barnes. “We’re cut from the same cloth—almost the same age and from similar backgrounds. But I feel the difference between him and me is that he doesn’t feel the burn quite so much as I do. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the metallic arm.”

Like Bruce Banner before him, much as been made by way of jokes regarding the Winter Soldier’s distinguishing feature as it pertains to his sex life. This train of thought leads me on a quest to discern sex amongst people with prosthetic limbs and physical disabilities. In times bygone (and still, sadly, today) the disabled were practically desexualized by society. With awareness on the rise, it wasn’t difficult for me to find information on how physical handicaps impact a person’s sex life. A communicative and caring partner, surprisingly, is key to a pleasant and healthy sex life.

But as Phil Coulson points out to me when next we cross paths, Bucky doesn’t consider himself disabled in the least. I am loathe to able-splain, and so it’s back to the drawing board.

By this point I hit a patch I’m sure Gay Talese never spun out on. I turn inwards. With the sky over New York turning gray and the winds off the Atlantic skinning my cheeks, it’s not difficult to get sullen. I start to ponder something I’ve never pondered before.

Is it wrong of me to be pursuing these stories? Not just in terms of superheroes and their relationships with sex and love, but the entire ethos of my work? After all, we despise those who cross the line of consent. If someone isn’t consenting to be so blunt about sex, what right do I have—do we have, as so-called “progressive people”—to force the issue? It shouldn’t be unfathomable that someone—let alone a cisgender heterosexual male—just doesn’t want to talk about it.

Defeat is on the horizon. I send my scant findings to my editor—and to my three sources. My tail will be tucked twixt my legs as I return to Canada in a few days. Like as not my article on Bucky Barnes will never see the light of day.

Fourteen hours before I’m due to leave, I get a call from Steve Rogers. He wants to meet at the same cafe as last time—Deja Brew on 18th and 29th. It’s evening, which means it’s dark save for the streetlights.

He offers me a chamomile tea—with honey. That Captain America knows my nighttime preference makes me a little lightheaded.

“If there’s one thing I don’t like,” Steve tells me, “it’s someone who deserts at the last leg of the race.”

Remember what I said about Steve making me feel like a grandchild being spoken to? Now I feel as if I just got caught stealing my old man’s wheels.

“You wanted to know the kind of man Bucky is—now you do.” Particular. Intense. Solitary. Unknowable.

But Steve isn’t going to let me walk away empty-handed.

“I like you, Sim. So I’ll tell you what you want to hear—Bucky does have an intimate side. He has a romantic side. Back then he was the Clark Gable and I was the Mickey Rooney. He’s changed. We all have. But even now, after everything, he’s still got a part of him that needs to be loved and protected.”

I feel as if he just said something he shouldn’t have. Steve doesn’t appear phased. But my face is flushed, and not just from cold. If he is my grandfather, I’m the grandkid who just peeked into a chest of treasures not meant for my eyes.

“I was frozen. He was used. I needed to be brought up to speed. He needed to hear the music of Tchaikovsky without socking a man’s head off. He’s not the fragile little broken boy that people make him out to be, but he still needs someone to shelter him.”

I don’t have to ask who the protector is in this situation.

“I became Captain America because of Bucky. And he became who he is now because of me. He protected me back then. And I protect him now.”

Readers, I want so badly to tell you what this meeting—this mission—impressed upon me about Bucky Barnes. About how being there in the dark with Steve Rogers baring his soul to some extent made me feel as I truly ought to stop asking people about their sex lives so much. I wish I hadn’t broached the subject at all, and just let my Sinatra stay home with his cold.

In fact, I wish I didn’t even know he had a cold.

Here’s the thing. Sex is wonderful. It’s human. We’re a lucky species in that we get so much from it other than reproduction. Love is transcendent. It makes everything in these chaotic multiverses make a little more sense. We should celebrate sex and love in all their forms, and stop pretending like they don’t exist or aren’t important.

Intimacy, though? To know and be known at a level so deep it hurts at the briefest touch? It can be annihilating. If writing is hostile, journalism is a perversion of intimacy. Capitalism meets the spiritual: show us your soul, and let me grow fat.

Next time I’ll be more cautious. If someone doesn’t want to talk to about sex, I’m not going to treat it as if they’re being narrow-minded or bashful. I’m not going to hunt them down. I might not like what I find.

Oh, and that metallic arm ?

“He makes ample use of it,” Steve tells me. “And so do I.”

Make of that what you will. But do me, Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers a favor—leave well enough the fuck alone.


	9. Oh Captain, My Captain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sim and Carol Danvers reminisce about the magic of 90’s music. Carol has a bone to pick with the editors of Cosmo magazine, and also reveals the just because she’s a badass doesn’t mean she isn’t a big old softie underneath it all.

“Wanna see my hole?”

These are the first words Carol Danvers asks me when I’m brought aboard the Alpha Flight Low Orbit Space Station. I’m a bit dazed after a truly harrowing Stark Industries flight from Cape Canaveral through the cold recesses of space. So it’s with somewhat less of my usual grace that I nod and follow Carol down a series of complicated corridors. The doors open onto her living quarters, and it takes me a long second to piece together just what she meant.

There are posters and magazine cutouts sticky tacked to the walls. Outside all is stars and a glimpse of our planet. Within the spaces of Captain Marvel’s home away from terra firma, it’s a proverbial young woman’s paradise circa 1996. By Hole, Carol meant the band, whose effigies hold a place of prominence alongside Alanis Morissette, Liz Phair and Garbage.

“I mourn the 90’s,” Carol says as she points to a beanbag chair, inviting me to sit down. “I had what you could call a stereotypical 90’s trajectory.” In the early half of the decade, Carol was grunge; she moved to alternative and power-pop after regaining her memories in the middle years and then took a detour into more contemporary pop fare.

The allegory between Carol and the women from her era whose faces watch us during our interview strikes me as significant. They’re badass. In their heyday, they were shit-disturbers, who inspired millions of young folks to revel in rebellion, and caused Tipper Gore levels of pearl-clutching. Carol, the most powerful of all The Avengers, had a similar effect on the public when she emerged from obscurity several years ago.

“It was great hearing the rallying cries,” she lets me know. “Because of course it was. But this was also during the rise of certain Internet movements which shall remain nameless. It was hard enough helping the Skrulls find a new place to live. Coming back to people accusing me of abandoning Earth, or being some fucking ice queen bitch from a Hell dimension wasn’t great.”

Much like the musicians she idolizes, Carol keeps on by keeping on. “If you cave, you vindicate them. And these gorgeous ladies didn’t make a mark in one of the most predominantly male dominated music scenes by being quiet and giving up.”

Courtney Love, Shirley Manson, Brody Dalle and their contemporaries are still active in the arts today. They’ve aged gracefully (almost miraculously so in the case of the much-maligned Love) but haven’t lost that certain something.

“I remember reading this one article—I can’t remember which magazine it was in. It wasn’t in Cosmo, that’s all I know. Anyway, Shirley Manson was just so switched on. She went on about how she preferred men going commando and her ideal penis size. There was an ease to it. Those women were raw because there hadn’t been any second wave female rock stars before and they were willing to make people squirm.”

It’s changed, at least in Carol’s opinion. She’s admittedly somewhat forlorn about the polish to feminism these days.

“We need to keep shouting because otherwise we backslide. But people seem so precious about things like sex these days. It’s all talk especially in music. Pure artifice. I don’t buy for a second some of the shit the things people sing and talk about today. I always wonder if there’s a PR figurehead behind it.”

Having recently come off of my borderline disastrous Bucky Barnes endeavor, I’m somewhat gunshy to broach the subject of sex with Carol. That, and she’s just such a rad woman to hang out with that making it about business—something Carol heartily loathes—would seem indelicate. Why would I care when we’re in the presence of the grunge goddesses?

“Come on, Sim. Hit me with your best shot.”

So I take the easy way out. We were just talking about Shirley Manson’s infamous interview—what does Carol look for in a partner, sexually?

“I don’t like big dicks, if that's what you mean. I think Shirley Manson actually went back on her preference a few years ago. I mean, a big dick...it’s like a piece of art, right? It’s nice to look at, but I don’t want too big for use. I’m not a breeding mare.”

We’re interrupted just as the goods get going. There’s been some distress call from a distant galaxy. Carol transforms before my eyes. The effusive, grinning maverick becomes solid as a rock. Her orders, issued via earpiece, are to the point, terse—not to be fucked with. Once the dispatch is sent, the guise falters. She’s relaxed again—apologetic, even.

Carol Danvers doesn’t wear a mask, but she can slip into different skins.

“I think it was a product of losing my identity. It’s easier for me than most.” It hasn’t made dating complicated, though.

Oh yeah. Captain Marvel does date.

“I do have my Earth-time. I’m seeing someone now—a Canadian man with a bit of a past. He gets me, which is nice. There’s not a lot who do.”

She tells me, with a smirk that would have made Courtney Love proud, her the size of her beau’s equipment. I won’t print it. I’ve learned my lesson.

“A lot of it is long distance. Video chats. There’s lots of tech that can make that really pleasant, but I’d rather have the hard, hairy man.”

I'm surprised to learn that Carol prefers body hair on a man. Excessively. While lumberjack beards are in, there's still a craze of metrosexual grooming among the male sex these days. 

“It’s a hangover from my crush on Burt Reynolds.” She knows herself. Moreover, she’s comfortable with knowing herself. Again, see the images of Manson, Morissette and Love. Downstairs, though, a man better be groomed. "I take care of my down there hair, so a guy better do the same." The superficial, though, pales in comparison to the really attractive quality of put-togetherness.

“It's the biggest attractive quality--people who have their shit figured out. I mean, sure, it’s fun to unearth yourself together, but that’s where the complications come in.”

Her guy, fortunately, is right on her level. It comes from age—although Carol demures on naming names or superhero affiliations. The mental image I have is a tall, hairy drink of water on the mature side.

“So,” I tell her, my lips twitching, “you want a man, not a boy who thinks he can?”

I’m not used to people finding my humor to their tastes. That Carol bursts into a hearty laugh is good for my ego. Hey, just because she prefers the harder rock version of the 90’s doesn’t mean she isn’t a Spice Girls fan.

“Those ladies did a lot for the world. Anything to help people own their sexuality. And you listen to those songs now—they’re just filthy in places. Not exactly Missy Elliot in scope.” Gesturing with one hand, she sings “Go downtown and eat it like a vulture, right?”

Oral sex is vital in a partner. Almost, I realize, specifically vital. Carol has parameters for being the recipient.

“Some guys will set up camp there and lick it like a plate of leftover wing sauce. I don’t know where the hell they keep getting this advice—probably from other guys or women who don’t know what they’re talking about—but there’s so much more to going down on a woman than lapping like a dog.”

Her current lover, Carol assures me, more than meets the criteria in that field. Again, she tells me it’s due to his age.

It’s all very forward—the kind of conversation I like to sink my teeth into. I’m certain once people get wind of this interview they’ll squirm. There’s still a ridiculous sphere of mystique around women’s views on sex. Maybe Carol Danvers turned something on—the way she did when she slipped into tactical, Captain Marvel mode. Then again, maybe she’s just looking for an excuse to let loose. She does spend a majority of her time quite literally out of this world.

Being on Alpha Flight, while it doesn’t make maintaining a live life exactly easy, is still something Carol prefers to Earth.

“It’s nuts down there. People like to pretend all this chaos is a new thing, but it was just as crazy in the 90’s. Riots, natural disasters, feminism…Only difference is that things are happening faster and more intensely.”

I’m quite sad to have to cut our interview after the allotted time runs out. Carol seems like the kind of person I’d hit it off with if only she weren’t otherwise engaged.

A few weeks later, I receive a package in the mail. To my delight, it’s a cassette tape (which, for those too young to remember, is like a streaming service with limited music in physical form) with hand drawn art in technicolor Sharpie on the front. It’s from Carol—a collection of sings to remind me of her.

The first track?

Fuck the Pain Away by Peaches.


	10. A Matter of Size

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott Lang has a blast delving into the topic of his decorated sex life. He tells Sim how liberating it can be to find yourself unexpectedly single, why some people find fathers attractive, and just how big his penis is when he’s in giant form.

Scott Lang would like you to know one thing—he’s never been up inside anyone while in shrunken form.

“Oh, I’ve seen the memes and shit,” he tells me. “It really shows you the depths of depravity some people are willing to stoop to. But not me. I think it’s gross. It would also be pitch black dark so what the fuck would be the point, right?”

We’re at his home in New Jersey. He’s in his personal gym—also known as garage outfitted with free weights, cardio equipment and Alexa synched to 80’s hits. Scott isn’t under house arrest any longer, but he’s found the habit of being a homebody hard to shake. Better to work out in the comfort of ones home then among the unwashed masses.

When you’ve been eye-level with the microscopic, your view on the world tends to shift.

“I’ve seen things that would make your skin crawl, Sim.” Scott is currently working through a lateral set. He’s a little sweaty, and it’s rather distracting. It figures I’d be on a break with my partner when I had to be in close proximity to a handsome guy. Scott’s only sense of relief is that he’s never seen the itty-bitties of the prison world where he once spent two years.

“They’re not clean. Not at all. There’s probably all sorts of crap floating around in the air, especially in the men’s prisons. I know they think they’re being clean, but they’re not.”

Another thing Scott is quick to disabuse myself, or anyone else of, is his experience in jail.

“It isn’t like Oz. But it’s also not not like Oz. There are prison wives and shit—you can only be backed up so much before you need someone to get you off. Lots of jerking it when there’s sweet fuck all else to do. Lucky me, I was never anyone’s chew toy.” This, mostly due to the penitentiary Scott was incarcerated in for two years falling in the medium security end of things.

Since his parole and partnership with The Avengers, prison reform has become something of a passion of Scott’s. Even in the world of moderate security, he found the conditions something to be desired.

“A lot of spite goes into punishing criminals. Which, like, I understand. But at the same time, it’s almost one stone’s throw away from Midnight Express in some parts of this country. Especially places where, y’know—prison rape is a thing. The brass turns its head because they’ve given up.” It’s a fine line to walk, and Scott is quick to admit that he still doesn’t quite know where to strike the balance. It would, as he tells me, be tempting to say that prisoners are victims and the system the enemy. But he knows better.

“I just wish there was some way to rehabilitate those who actually need it. There’s precious few people in jail who deserve to be treated so animalistically.”

There’s a certain patina of masculine mystique imposed upon ex-convicts. Shows such as Oz and Sons of Anarchy tend to make the rugged criminal a subject of fantasy. Even romance novels and porn have a rich history of romanticizing these institutions.

For Scott, it’s something of a high-wire act.

“It’s flattering, sure. Especially to the delicate ego of the human male. You want to feel like it was all for something, and being thought of as a sex symbol is great. But it’s not right. Not at all. You look at the people who married Manson during his time in lockup. Or even Jeremy Meeks. It’s memetic. It’s a way to see convicts as people, because they still are; but even Jeremy said folks should look beyond the mug and the muscles and remember that he committed crimes.”

It goes beyond the celebration of the rehabilitated. Even Scott, whose offenses were relatively minor, knows he ended up on the wrong side of things. And while it’s soothing for the self-esteem, he finds the paradox poisonous.

He pauses in his set, and then shakes his head. “Let’s talk about something else, yeah? This is starting to harsh my mellow.”

What else is there, then?

Apparently circling back to the discourse surrounding Scott’s size powers. Among his time in prison, that’s one of the best things known about him among the unwashed masses.

He swaggers to the towel rack—so much for not idealizing the rogue. Smooth Operator by Sade starts over his Bluetooth speaker. Scott grins, and it’s cockier than a Montgomery County farmhouse.

It’s been a hot minute since I felt sucked in by the gravity of a superhero. Scott happens to be something of a living Achilles heel. I have a thing for male bravado when not toxic. Having run through my paces with Thor, it’s easier for me to have immunity in this instance.

But only by a margin.

“You’ve gotta understand something about that suit,” Scott tells me. “The only reason I can do what I do is because it’s on me So it’s not like I can just waltz around buck-ass nekkid and fifteen stories tall. But I am a red-blooded rogue, so of course I got a little curious.”

Turns out the suit doesn’t have to be entirely on for Scott’s powers to work.

“I unzipped once when I was mega size. Out in the middle of the Pine Barrens, where hopefully no one could see me.” His grin widens. “I’m about ten times my normal height when I go maximum, so I’d say my dick is about seven feet in giant form—and that’s when flaccid.” He didn’t work up the nerve to sport a chubby even among the primeval realms of the Jersey Devil.

My head spins a little. I’m no slouch at math, and a quick calculation brings me to realize something even more personal about the gentleman thief.

“Pretty nuts, right? A forty-year old guy still obsessed with measuring his Johnson. Haven’t done that shit since I was in the grips of puberty. But hey—some guys are a little too obsessed with their junk anyway.”

I’m quick—a little too quick, admittedly—to point out that the obsession runs the gamut. Porn, and romance novels, have sort of made big dicks ubiquitous to an almost toxic level.

“What’s the average size in America? Five and a half? There’s nothing wrong with that at all, Sim. Whatever feels right to you or your partner as far as I’m concerned. But still—be proud of what you’ve got, I say. And I just so happen to have decent equipment even when I’m not mega-sized-Scotty. Although when I’m the size of an ant, my penis may well not even exist.”

The conversation is going swimmingly. It’s what I long for in this series. Scott, however, has a young daughter. I’m a bit nervous of what she’d think.

Scott shrugs. “Hey, it’s a sex article, so I might as well be frank. Besides, I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Not even from certain innocent eyes?

“Oh, my daughter wouldn’t read your magazine. No offense. She’s still young and she’s embarrassed enough by my high profile as it is.”

He goes a little sober. We’ve veered into delicate territory, and I know better than to venture into these paths. See the Bucky Barnes article for further reference. I am, however, curious in regards to the area of fatherhood—something I personally hope to avoid.

“It’s a mixed bag,” Scott says. “But when the women I’ve dated see how devoted I am to my daughter—I don’t know. Something changes. I wouldn’t say it’s an attractant but there is a definite shifting of gears.”

There’s been a surge of Dad-related content in our society. From dad jokes to dad-bods, the father archetype is seeing something of an emergence, albeit a very particular one. A recent survey in the UK concluded that women find fathers—good ones, that is—attractive due to their habit of acting selflessly and with purpose.

“Hey, it took me a while to get there,” Scott admits. “You can justify a lot of what I did with good reasoning, but there’s where the asphalt to Hell gets laid. And speaking of laid, just because I’ve gone on a fair share of dates doesn’t mean I always get lucky.” He pats his stomach. “I think I oughta work on the dadbod a little bit more.”

Personally I find that a stretch. I’m sure that after this article hits the presses, Scott will have numerous people seeking him out. After all, even in pedestrian size, Scott has admitted to being equipped. And he’s one of those doubly blessed people who has true Big Dick Energy vis-á-vis his swagger.

He finds my assessment complimentary—thank God. I’ve ruffled too many Avengers feathers of late.

“Don’t worry about offending me, Sim. I just admitted to having the smallest package in the world when I’m shrunk down. It’s really no big deal.”

Game, set and match, Scott Lang.


End file.
